Poll: Seattle Seahawks’ Richard Sherman defends himself, what do you think of his antics?

From the reaction on Twitter and elsewhere Monday, you’d think the big event last night was a sideline interview at CenturyLink Field when an NFC Championship Game broke out. Seattle Seahawks cornerback Richard Sherman’s post-game rant to Fox’s Erin Andrews immediately following the Hawks’ 23-17 win has gone viral — and then some. The nation-wide reaction has been swift and mostly negative, with pundits decrying Sherman for making himself bigger than the game and showing a lack of class in victory.

Pro football is about men who can bench press trailers crashing into each other, and guided missiles in helmets colliding with human gazelles, and gruesome injuries that happen with such regularity that we can schedule commercials around them. Not to mention the concussions. You’d have to hypnotize me to play in a professional football game.

And these men do. They hypnotize themselves into this fevered state.

And we expect them to just let it all go when the whistle blows, and we snap our fingers.

Sherman has been upset with Crabtree since last summer. Both attended Arizona star receiver Larry Fitzgerald’s charity event. While there, Sherman went to shake Crabtree’s hand, and Crabtree tried to start a fight, according to Sherman’s older brother, Branton.

“I’m going to make a play and embarrass him,” Richard Sherman vowed that day.

Perhaps the most interesting defense of Sherman came from the man himself. In his regular column for Sports Illustrated’s MMQB site, Sherman advises caution when judging players by their on-field conduct:

To those who would call me a thug or worse because I show passion on a football field—don’t judge a person’s character by what they do between the lines. Judge a man by what he does off the field, what he does for his community, what he does for his family.

But people find it easy to take shots on Twitter, and to use racial slurs and bullying language far worse than what you’ll see from me. It’s sad and somewhat unbelievable to me that the world is still this way, but it is. I can handle it.